Kevin Harvick won Saturday’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Martinsville Speedway.

It was Harvick’s second straight victory as he won at Atlanta Motor Speedway last time out. It was his second victory at Martinsville. He has now won six of the last 10 truck series events.

Harvick led 187 laps.

“Obviously the guys have done a great job in preparing the truck and today was just a lot of fun for me just for the fact that the thing was so dominant to drive,” Harvick said. “I didn’t really have to do a whole lot different. I just drove my line every lap and we were able to make our way through traffic when we needed to behind the 17 (Timothy Peters) to pass him for the lead there. It looked like his truck just started to get a little bit loose in the corner and we were able to capitalize on that.”

Finishing second in Saturday’s Kroger 250 was Ron Hornaday Jr., who was driving a truck owned by Harvick.

Brian Ickler, driving a truck owned by Kyle Busch, was third.

Peters was fourth and owns the series points lead – he is 59 ahead of Aric Almirola, 88 ahead of Todd Bodine and 111 ahead of Harvick.

“A solid finish, that’s what we needed to do to be a threat for this championship,” Peters, who won the season-opening race at Daytona, said. “We did what we had to do. I can’t thank the team enough for this awesome opportunity.”

After the race, Johnny Sauter, who was running near the front most of the race, went after Hornaday in the pits. Hornaday had punted Sauter from behind to get the second spot late in the race.

The two jawed at each other for a couple of minutes with a NASCAR officials standing between them. Sauter eventually walked away.

Hornaday said the incident was just racing.

Sauter refused to criticize Hornaday to the media.

“We’re obviously disappointed with the way the day ended for the SealMaster/Try13.com Chevy,” Sauter said. “There’s no question we were one of the best two trucks here, and I really thought we had a chance to get up and race Harvick for the win. Unfortunately we got taken out. That’s part of short track racing I guess. It’s discouraging because the guys built an awesome truck and we deserved a lot better than that.”

Hornaday, the defending series champion, got his first decent finish of the season as he was 27th in the season-opener at Daytona and 31st at Atlanta.

Narain Karthikeyan from India, who formerly raced in Formula One, had an impressive debut in his first NASCAR major-series race, finishing 13th on the lead lap.

No Comment